Dreamlike reality – Adam Barcsai’s artwork
Our minds craft the screenplay of our dreams by drawing on experiences gathered during the day. The PORTAL project offers an opportunity for immersion in a dreamlike, alternative reality while awake. In the spring of 2024, Adam Barcsai won the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design’s Best Designer Maker Award with his immersive piece.
“My aim was to create an artwork that straddles the line between fine art and design”, says Adam. The PORTAL project examines the relationship between reality and dreams, as well as the external and internal worlds. During the design process, Adam sensitively abstracted the concepts of the dream world, reality, and mind in multiple stages, primarily using surrealist paintings as the basis. Despite being crafted from simple geometric shapes, the piece is executed with remarkable intricacy.
The sphere, bisected and made from densely fired stoneware, symbolises the mind, serving as a bridge between the external and internal worlds. These dimensions are embodied by two contrasting textures: the surface of the hemisphere is covered with a dry shrink glaze (the outside), while an apparently liquid, concave silver mirror lens represents the alternative reality (the inside). The mirror is crafted from concave, silvered glass, while the join between the hemisphere and the lens are covered by a ceramic ring, also finished with shrink glaze.
When stepping up to the PORTAL, the concave lens shows various optically distorted images. These reflections change depending on the distance from which the object is viewed – stepping back, for example, causes the mirror image to abruptly invert. Conversely, when we reach towards the interior of the object, the holographic image evokes a sensation of touching ourselves from within.
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The project was developed at the Designer Maker BA programme of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design with Zoltán Lublóy as supervisor.
